Originally Posted by
Tourist in MSN
A couple times a year a thread starts on water filters. And sometimes some heated debates start, sometimes not. Many filters are mentioned, but little consensus is reached.
Since I’m usually the culprit that starts the heated debates, I’ll chime in.
6 - Someone on this forum commented before that his attempt to use the Sawyer filter was a disaster. He bought the filter, tried it at home, and it worked great. He then put the filter in storage, and months later went on a trip where he had very poor flow. In that forum thread, others suggested that his problem was that he did not back flush the filter first. I test every thing that could mess up one of my trips before I go. In my case, I bought the filter, it worked great. The filter then sat on the shelf for 23 months in my home with water in the filter. And during my pre-trip test I had poor gravity flow through it 23 months later while still at home. I then did a robust backflush, and the filter then worked much better.
You’ve got the story all wrong. I did not test the filter at home. I carried it to a high country lake that sits at about 12,000 feet. I filtered about a liter of water from a crystal clear stream with zero turbidity. At 12,000 feet, the dissolved solids in the water is also nearly zero. I did not back flush the filter before storage because it wasn’t needed. The water I would have backflushed with probably has more dissolved solids than the high country stream does…and Denver’s water doesn’t have much in the way of dissolved solids.
As to storage, 23 months of storage in Wisconsin is a very different environment than a similar time in Colorado. Our humidity, both relative and absolute, is lower than yours. That might have an effect on how much my filter dried out. I am hesitant to leave the filter with water in it for long periods because that invites mildew.
When I did use it again in the field, I had no reason to expect it to not work. I had filtered only a small amount of water previously. I saw no need to test it nor to back flush it nor to do anything other than just use it. I’ve done that with my other filters that aren’t hollow fiber. Nothing I’d read previously suggested otherwise. It appears that Sawyer has changed some of their recommendations over the last 7 years.
Others may want to risk the Sawyer. Many people have used them successfully. But others (a few) have had the same problem.
I still wouldn’t use one, no matter how light or improved they are. I’ll stick with my MSR Sweetwater. It may be heavy but it works without too much maintenance. Something that doesn’t work is far heavier.